Prosecutors link slaying to jealousy

A Chicago man has been charged with stabbing and strangling his girlfriend of two years in a North Side motel Monday because he thought she was seeing another man, prosecutors said Tuesday.

Rafael Ayala-Bazan, 29, is charged with first-degree murder in the slaying of Irma Cerritos, 37, at a motel on North Lincoln Avenue. He was ordered held in lieu of $700,000 bail.

The incident was touched off when another man answered Ayala-Bazan's call to his girlfriend's cell phone, authorities said, and then when he saw her in a van with a stranger.

Assistant State's Atty. Nick Kondellis said Ayala-Bazan invited Cerritos to the motel, where they had sex, and then he killed her. After Cerritos was dead, Kondellis said, Ayala-Bazan called the victim's sister.